


Masked Andraste

by ponchard



Series: Literal Elf Nerds [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Literal Elf Nerds, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Programmers, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Scientists, Alternate Universe - Software Engineers, Ancient Elves (Dragon Age), Anonymity, Any Resemblance Between Falon'din And Real Tech Billionaires Is Purely Coincidental, Apothecary, Arlathan, Biology, Canon Compliant, Crack, Dreams and Nightmares, Elvhenan, Flowers, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Harvest of History, Herbalist - Freeform, Multiple identities, Near Future, Nugs, Plants, Post-Fall Thedas is Canon Compliant, Pre-Fall Thedas is AU, Programmers, Programming, Propagation, Prophetic Dreams, Prophetic Visions, Skyhold, Software Engineers, That "Have You Heard My Idea For A Startup" Guy Who Won't Shut Up, Uncomfortably Realistic Horticulture, Very Oblique References To The Tirashan, Visions, Why Am I Teaching You How To Garden IRL, Yeah I Realize It's Weird That This Is AU AND Canon Compliant, biologists, singularity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 21:29:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10558000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponchard/pseuds/ponchard
Summary: Elan Ve'mal sat cross-legged in the grass, grinding up willow buds with her pestle. Beside her, one of the younger herbalists packed cloth strips with peat moss. It smelled foul. Her entire team was convinced the Inquisitor had scooped it out of that awful marsh. But peat was peat, and the plants didn't mind. If anything, they considered corpse bits a bonus...





	

Elan Ve'mal sat cross-legged in the grass, grinding up willow buds with her pestle. Beside her, one of the younger herbalists packed cloth strips with peat moss. It smelled foul. Her entire team was convinced the Inquisitor had scooped it out of that awful marsh. But peat was peat, and the plants didn't mind. If anything, they considered corpse bits a bonus. 

"Make it thicker," she said, gesturing vaguely with the pestle. "The roots will need room to grow." The apprentice grimaced, slopping more peat moss onto the strips. 

"Good. Now we make sure everything is ready before we cut. Is the peat moss wet?" Her students nodded. "Is the willow paste ready?" She cocked the mortar, showing them the consistency. They nodded. "Are we ready to tie?" The pair who'd been cutting string nodded. 

"Very well. Hand me a strip, thank you." She cupped the strip in her hand, moss pointing up. She draped a few strings off the end of her fingers. With her other hand, she pulled out her knife. Tugging on one of the shrub's branches, she extended it so the other herbalists could see. In one smooth motion, she made two ring cuts around the bark, exposing the green wood beneath. Quickly, she dipped her fingers in the willow paste and smeared it around the cut. 

By the time she spoke again, she'd already wrapped the peat moss around the area, tying off the satchel so it would stay attached. She pulled her hand away. "Don't hesitate. If the wound dries out, it may die before roots grow. Now you try."

As the apprentices went to work on the other branches, a messenger walked up to her, waving his hand in front of his nose. "Dare I ask what you're doing?"

"Air layering," she said, before remembering he wasn't an herbalist. "Ah, we're making new plants out of the old one." She held up one of the tied-off packets, pointing at the bulging peat moss. "In a few weeks, roots will grow here. When they do, we can cut here, underneath, and plant this branch in the ground. It's called a cutting."

"Why not use seeds?"

"Seeds take longer, and they don't grow true. Think of a spotted horse and a striped horse. If they mate, will the foal have stripes or spots? With plants, we can make the same 'horse' every time."

"You can do this with horses?" His eyes widened. "What about people?"

Now, Elan Ve'mal had a choice. Many elves grew tired of the mystique surrounding their ill-defined "powers". And justifiably so. Too often, fears of shadowy elven magicks led to... problems with the humans. It was usually better to quash such rumors before they spread. 

Usually.

"If you want a twin, I can grow you one. He can help you deliver messages!" She picked up her knife and a strip of peat moss. "Here, stick out your finger..."

The messenger yelped, throwing the tiny scroll at her chest and half-jogging away. _Thwap._ Elan Ve'mal kept her composure just long enough for him to flee out of sight. Hiding her laughter, she reached down for the scroll. She rolled it around in her fingers, looking for the seal. 

_Goodson._

She scowled, crumpling the note in her fist. After checking on her students' progress, she grabbed a dead rosebush and headed into the keep. The first fireplace she saw, she chucked the unopened message into the flames. 

Deeper in the keep, she found her private workbench and unlocked the top drawer. Some things were not meant for apprentices' eyes. A lesson she'd learned, fittingly enough, from that void-damned Goodson. She flipped the dead plant over, letting the stems hang between her fingers, and slowly worked it out of its pot. With sticks, she gently combed through the dirt, splaying the roots out in a fan shape. Most of them were brown and slippery.

After cutting away the rot, Elan Ve'mal inspected the base of the roots for any signs of growth, holding it up to the light. A splash of green, a speck of white, anything other than- there it was. She rummaged through the drawer, keeping her eye fixed on the spot. Uncapping a syringe with her teeth, she plunged it into the almost-dead plant. 

\---

Anaris slid the toothpick out of his sandwich. He frowned at the avalanche of tomatoes and cress, quickly tilting his carryout box to catch it. "See, I'm too clumsy for this," he joked. 

"'Would it be so bad to abandon our squishy bodies?' still seems like a strong response to 'my squishy body sometimes drops food.'" said Elan Ve'mal. 

"I'm with the intern on this one," said Daern'thal, not bothering to disguise a smirk. "Should we be concerned?"

"Look, it's not like that." Anaris said, hastily. "Actually, maybe I should be concerned about you!"

"Because..?" Geldauran looked over the lip of her book, her curiosity about the conversation too powerful to ignore. 

"Every day, you take all your goals and dreams and-"

Daern'thal cut in. "How long have you been practicing this?"

"Hear me out. You take everything about yourself, and you pass it on to a fragile meat body for safekeeping. Hoping it won't get killed."

"You sound like Tenebrium. Or The Guide, or whatever handle Falon'din is going by today." Everyone had multiple handles, but normal people kept them separate. That was the point. One for business, one for family, one for friends, and several dozen for one's more embarrassing journeys into the Fade. Each with a different personality, a different facet of yourself, so they couldn't be linked to each other. Sharing _those_ handles was crazy - or, in Falon'din's case, a publicity stunt.

"Not quite," said Geldauran, "he hasn't said anything about going into space, yet."

"The Guide is brilliant, but he's looking at the problem from the wrong angle."

"Oh, never mind, I hear him now."

"He's trying to make bodies immortal, but all we really need is the mind. Why drag along this fragile mess when we can do better?"

"We... can?" Elan Ve'mal squinted at Anaris, as if trying to read the implied research paper off his face. 

"Sooner than you think."

"Ah yes," said Daern'thal, "soon. Soon, we will solve the mysteries of consciousness. Right after that cold fusion reactor and the stable quantum computer." His words lacked their usual bite. Deep down, this was the one technological advance he was rooting for. It was practically in the job description 

_AI Researcher Wanted!_

_The ideal candidate must be passionate and self-motivated, with a degree in machine learning or related field. They should publicly tut-tut all advances in AI, while praying they live to see their baby consume the world!_

_Competitive pay and benefits!_

Geldauran looked at the time and got up. "Meeting." Elan Ve'mal chugged the last of her drink and followed after her. "Do you remember which room we're in?"

"I got us a smaller one this time. Think it's over here somewhere."

Geldauran pushed open a door and walked in, shutting it behind them. She opened up her computer and plugged in an odd-looking peripheral. "I've got your new project figured out."

Elan Ve'mal peered at the screen, which was densely packed with text. "Great! What is it?"

The older engineer brought two windows up, side by side. "These are two builds of that code." The files weren't meant to be read as text. As she scrolled down, they veered back and forth between almost-words, blank spaces, and garbled masses of symbols. "Except they aren't. This one is three times as long as the one I compiled from source. Why? It must be something, but I've poked it every which way and it seems to act the same."

Elan Ve'mal turned the problem over in her mind. "You want me to read machine code?"

"Not machine code." She hit a button on the peripheral and rattled off a shortcut on her computer. The device began to glow, a blobby stain of _something_ moving under the top pane of glass. 

Elan Ve'mal's eyes lit up. She'd heard of this! Code that compiled into genes and proteins instead of machine instructions. Anyone with a bit of programming background could spin up a custom cell or, with a little extra practice, a creeping sludge of parts. If you were a genius like Ghilan'nain, you could code up any creature you imagined. It was like magic. Last she'd heard, only the Creators had a working tool, and they kept their research under lock and key. She'd never imagined she'd actually get to _write_ it. 

"We have one of these?" Her voice hit a higher register. 

Geldauran grinned.

"Hit this button to deploy the big build, this one to deploy the smaller one. I have the source in a repo, so you can play around with it, see if you can make it compile to the bigger file." Her intern was already wiring the device up to her own computer, nearly buzzing out of her seat. "Let me know if you need any lab supplies. You're our first biologist."

\---

She re-potted the shriveled plant as best she could, trying not to snap off any pieces. Tucking it under her arm, she made her way along a very specific route. Passersby would see the apothecary going back and forth between the garden and several of the supply rooms, as she did every day. It wouldn't be of any particular interest that she never picked up or dropped off anything. As far as they knew, she was visiting the stockrooms merely to sing to plants or commune with trees. 

"Nightingale! I was just thinking of you." _Fancy running into you by chance, on the path you always take._ She set the plant down on a nearby table. 

"Oh?" The other agents knew by now. The script was the same, or almost the same, every time. What mattered was keeping up the facade for Inquisition soldiers and guests. Gardeners were sometimes privy to different conversations, words that might not be shared on official channels. The arrangement went way back, to her days tending Divine Justinia's garden. 

"Yes, the black lotus is in bloom! You should stop by, it's beautiful." If Isthmus Goodson happened to grow black lotus, what of it?

"So I've heard. Roland and Bennet have been saying the same." It would have been difficult indeed for Roland or Bennet to comment on Skyhold's gardens, as they'd been dispatched on a minor assassination several weeks ago. An assassination that, according to their latest message, was woefully understaffed. 

"Do you need a second opinion?" said the herbalist, laughing. "Maybe Neria should take a look?"

"Neria has been busy lately." Leliana thought for a moment. Neria's line of investigation hadn't borne any fruit, and likely never would. Apostates always had some degree of uncertainty in their background. When someone had spent their entire life evading templars, they left very soft footprints. "Though perhaps she could use a break. I may suggest it to her."

"Nothing like a garden to unwind in." Elan Ve'mal smiled. That, at least, was genuine.

"I really should stop by. It must be lovely this time of year." 

"Just don't look at our compost pile." She rapped on the potted plant with her knuckle. 

"What happened to that one?"

"Overwatering. The roots get swampy and rot away. With less roots, the plant gets thirsty. They see it wilting and add even more water." 

"Parched and drowned at the same time?"

The herbalist nodded. 

"How horrible!"

She sighed. "Every year I warn them, every year someone does it."

Leliana reached out to rub one of the leaves. "Can I have it?" she blurted out. "I'm sorry-" How could she explain such a strange request? To explain it would kill it, somehow, would drag the dream into daylight and kill it. Or worse, it would make it true, after she'd already rebuilt over its ashes.

"No, go ahead." Elan Ve'mal's eyes crinkled as she gave her the pot. "Why not? You're hardly the first bard to be inspired by a dead thing."

That's what it was. Inspiring. She would keep it on her windowsill and be inspired by its finality. Watch it crumple and curl like a half-burned habit. She would see it dead, and let the dream lie dead, splayed between pillows and sheets. Where it belonged. But dreams were such slippery marks, in a world so touched by the Fade. Two days hence, she would feed her nugs. They could crush what she could not, enjoy what she could not. 

Two days more, and she would announce her intention to become Divine.

**Author's Note:**

> They say "write what you know", and I know nothing about running a coffee shop and/or tattoo parlor. So here we are. The Spirit of Crackfic whispered to me from its ancient prison, and suddenly I'm 3 stories into a programmer AU. I hope you're enjoying it, dear reader! <3
> 
>  
> 
> And now it's time for some...
> 
> ~✿ P L A N T ! ✿ F A C T S ! ✿~
> 
> ✿ A cutting is a cut-off piece of plant that's used to grow a clone of the original plant. You stick the cut end in peat moss or water, keep the humidity high, and cross your fingers. If you're lucky, roots grow out of the cut end in a couple weeks. Some plants are really good at this, others not so much. For some of the more difficult plants, air layering is an option. You cut off a ring of bark, tie moist peat moss around that area, and leave the core of the branch attached until after roots grow. This lets the "parent" plant keep feeding the cutting while it's growing roots.
> 
> ✿ It turns out that willows, in addition to producing the active ingredient in aspirin, also produce a lot of rooting hormone. The hormone tells that part of the plant, "if you have a chance to grow roots, do it". In willows, it's concentrated near the branch tips. You can still use crushed up willow tips to help grow cuttings, though these days it's easy to get jars of liquid rooting hormone.
> 
> ✿ Most houseplants are more vulnerable to overwatering than underwatering. Plants have their own diseases, and mold loves wet conditions. Even if moisture returns to normal, the rot can keep traveling up the roots and eventually kill the plant. For the vast majority of plants, stick a finger in the soil before watering. Is it dry under the surface? Does the pot feel light? Then it's probably safe to water.


End file.
